Development of Children's Sadness

We asked 96 children from first, third, fifth, and seventh grades to describe situations in which they were sad, and posed questions to assess the related causes, intensity, motives, and consequences. Results showed that sadness was caused by harm in the majority of incidents. There was a shift with age in the nature of the harmful causes of sadness, toward a greater frequency of harm to others as opposed to harm to self, as well as a greater frequency of psychological versus physical harm. Harm to pets, isolation, and prevention of goal achievement by another were causes of sadness and the latter decreased with age. Kindergarten children reported a lower intensity of sadness than did older children. As age increased, so did children's identification of motives for sadness. The most and least frequent of consequences of children's sadness were passive nonexpression and verbal expression of feelings, respectively. Finally, there was a decrease with age in children's redirective behavior (quick shifts towards happy activities) as a consequence of sadness.